The Ohio Senate voted 23-7 to pass a law making it illegal for the Ohio government to ban guns during emergencies. This comes as the Joe Biden Administration has been trying to crack down on gun ownership and limiting ammunition.
Biden’s new Executive Orders focused on a whole host of gun grabs, including going after self-assembled guns (inaccurately termed “ghost guns“) and pushing for Congress to pass so-called “Red Flag” laws which seek to take a person’s guns without due process if a neighbor simply files a complaint against the person before a federal judge without a trial or a chance for the person to state their side.
The Ohio law, titled “Regards emergency powers when suppressing a riot; firearms rights” is a slap in the face to the Biden Administration because it deems gun ownership an essential activity. This would make it impossible for the Ohio governor to ban gun ownership and even activities such as hiking.
According to a summary of the bill from the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, the bill “declares firearm possession, transportation, carrying, commerce, and training range access, as well as hunting and fishing, to be life sustaining, essential activities. Both local and state government authorities are prohibited from infringing upon these rights under the guise of a declared emergency, either on a local or state level.”
Further, the bill allows citizens to sue their state and local governments if they attempt to circumvent this amendment to Ohio’s emergency powers act and try to regulate gun ownership anyway. Lawsuits have been successfully used in other states to thwart gun grabbing by anti-gun liberal governors and state legislatures. One such example is in California where the Firearms Policy Coalition is successfully staying a gun confiscation law that banned so-called “assault weapons” in California.
In the latest ruling, the judge wrote that California’s ban on “assault weapons” is unconstitutional because many of the guns on the list deemed “assault weapons” are already legal under the Constitution as currently interpreted in multiple Supreme Court cases. Additionally, the judge wrote that government officials cannot, therefore, enforce the ban. Thus, the judge issued an injunction staying the bill until a final decision is reached.
The Ohio bill has not passed the Ohio House, so it is not officially a law. However, a similar bill is already in the Ohio House and gun rights advocates are optimistic about the Senate Bill passing. They are now calling on the Ohio House Regulatory Committee to consider the bill so it will have a vote on the House floor.
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–John S. Paluska is a contributor to CNJ news.